Friends
What a difference a week makes. Last Tuesday stocks suffered their first big losing day of the year with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling over 200 points for the day. Today, powered by the shorts getting squeezed and bold action from JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon, stocks surged to the upside. With the latest stress test to be revealed this afternoon, JP Morgan jumped the gun to announce an increase in the dividend and a sizable stock buyback($15 billion). Bank stocks rallied and pulled the market up with them. All this after a somewhat uneventful Fed meeting and announcement. Yes, rates will be low forever, and the Fed is concerned about a lot of things, blah blah blah.
For the day the Dow was up 217 points to close at 13,177. The S&P 500 was up almost 25 points to close at 1395. Gold was down $30 to trade near $1669 and oil was up $.33 to trade near $106.67.
Today marked the first time ever that the NASDAQ closed over 3000 and the S&P closed over 1300 at the same time. NASDAQ had not closed above 3000 since December of 2000. As the market got quieter and quieter over the past several sessions (volatility going way down), the likelihood of a break one way or the other was increasing. Today we got the break to the upside, as traders used the JP Morgan news (and other bank’s news) as a signal to push stocks higher. We’ll see if we can build on this tomorrow.
Have a nice evening everyone.
